And what will happen to that cop?

What could be done that would be 'justice'?

*shakes head*
*finds a bottle of booze and drinks away the sad*

I actually live in Baytown displaced. Not that we're that far from Houston but I pay little attention to local news outside of the politics of Baytown or the state. I probably haven't bought the Chronicle in 10 years and have no reason to watch local stations. It's a big world out there with many aspects that will affect me and mine. Outside of politics and road work local events don't impact me. Growing up in S La. 40+ years ago where being black automaticly makes you suspect has probably desensatized me to a degree about such abuses. Also, I'm as far away from being a sports fan as one can get so that angle wouldn't have garnered a second look.

Brian,Leanan,every body,

Please EVERYBODY ELSE-stop here and think a minute what happens when and if the government runs out of money.

A local government may actually have to bite the bullet and reduce spending,as is frequently happening these days ,up to the state level.

On the other hand there is absolutely NOBODY OR NOTHING capable of preventing the FEDERAL government of the US( or any other national government,for that matter) from continueing to spend by printing the money when it can no longer be borrowed-if congress and the president choose to do so.

Now if you have a few decades of reading the news out of DC under your belt,you should realize that it almost impossible to overestimate the lengths that our govt will go to to avoid making a TRULY politically unpopular decision-such as clamping down on spending at a time when ts is already in tf and every nickel and dime pressure group from the hot dog vendors association and the cashmere wool growers cooperative on up to half the big banks and two thirds of Detroit are begging for a welfare check-NOT TO MENTION a good many states and localities.

So we are treading on some very thin ice.If the bailouts work,and the printing can be stopped,maybe we come out ok.

If for some reason things go wrong-and there are SO many ways for things to go wrong-then Uncle Sam's most likely course of action-judging fron history- is to keep the pedal down and try to bull his way thru by printing even more money-exactly the way you try to keep moving on a snowy road,when you know that if you stop you are NOT going to get going again,and that if you DON'T keep going,you are FINISHED-YOU FREEZE IN THE BlIZZARD.I really want to use some profane language to emphasize this scenario,but this IS a public forum.

Now there can be and almost certainly does exist a tipping point at which there is a loss of confidence in the dollar and every body with cash tries to bail before the amount of funny money chasing the world's supply of resources ranging from crude oil to farm land to next years corn crop renders thier cash worth maybe a couple of percent less every month.

If we hit that tipping point-and nobody can say exactly where it lies-

Every body will be trying to buy hard goods.Nobody will renew a t-bill unless the interest rate is maybe fifteen percent or even worse..Why do you think the Chinese are buying iron ore,scrap metal,and oil as fast as they can unload the stuff?-meaning both the dollars AND the metal and oil.Does anybody really expect oil and iron to get cheaper over the next few years-? Barring the possibility of a crash so hard there IS no recovery?

Now one beautiful thing about inflating a currency,from the govt pov,is that the people who are first in line to get the handouts are well organized and able to show thier gratitude at the polls and at the fund raisers.Most of them,when they are hard working auto workers for instance, will never realize that IF the currency becomes worthless that THIER handout contributed to the problem.

The second beautiful thing about inflating a currency is that the effects feel very good in the short term,like getting drunk.The biggest difference is that if YOU drink tonight,tomorrow YOU suffer the hangover.When a currency is inflated,the hangover is spread out over every body who is holding it or using it-all the way down to your kids with a few bucks in a savings account BUT the high is enjoyed by the recievers of the hand out in proportion to the size of thier helping and thier proximity to the source-the govt.The fact that the average voter is financially and economically illiterate means that he can not make the connection between his persistent headache and govt spending,meaning in turn that he may even vote for the folks who are destroying the value of any dollars he has due to him,such as the cash value of an insurance policy,or the monthly payment from the sale of his house if he finances the buyer-or a pension check that does not increase as fast as inflation.

The third beautiful but closely related thing about inflating the money is that the hangover is delayed,sort of like an incipient liver problem,but probably not as long.But long enough that if you really screw it up,you may already be out of office and can blame it on the opposition.

A fourth beautiful thing(always from the soverign govt pov of course) is that if you pull it off successfully-meaning that you do it but manage to keep from losing control altogether-you wipe out your older obligations to the extent that you inflate.

A fifth kinda cute feature is that everybody finds themselves in a defacto higher tax bracket unless there is previous legislation in place to index taxes.This of course allows the govt to make at least a little progress towards a balanced budget w/o raising taxes. because after all we don't WANT this scenario to really play out,do we?

As far as things that can go wrong are concerned,any regular here can probably think of a dozen.A cocaine submarine loaded with artillery shells and rammed into a super tanker.A repeat of the WWI flu epidemic.A revolution in some powder keg locality in the oil and sand world.An assination of some key leader in a hot spot.An unexpectedly fast decline rate in the super giants.Demand destruction will at some point become irrevelant to shortages as we simply have to have a certain amount of oil to maintain the industrial,farm,and security infrastructures.Any half dozen really tough and determined men who have read a Spetsnaz guerilla warfare manual or two could take out a middle sized city in this country with very little in the way of finance or technical training,and they wouldn't need anything you can't buy at Home Depot and Walmart.( So far as I can see the only we reason we haven't been brought to our knees by infiltrated terrorists is that nobody is really trying to,with the exception of maybe a few nuts who can't keep secrets very well..)

Now just TRY to remove yourself from any assumptions you may have made about the stability of our financial system,and look at them objectively from a good distance away.Put them on a beam balance and on the other end put your frustrations with the shortsighted ham handed actions( mostly inaction really) of our leaders visavis peak oil,aids,poverty,crime and drugs or whatever disturbs you the most-climate change,redneck republicans, or Hillary's resurrected take over of the health care system.Now think hard about how much confidence you have in the direction that balance will move.

Ps Lots of financial types have long thought that we were already past the point of no return(the tipping point) even before the current crisis arrived.

If I were getting paid to do this I could take the time to polish it up a little.

Remember I'm just a crabby old farmer.But you just might want to think about this seriously anyway.